Many thanks! We have had a great time working on this. I hope you enjoy our game!

There are some interesting people in the team some of which are professionals of the gaming industry from the 90s that are now looking to get back. We also have a music producer who is working on an album (which eventually will be called Dicetris) and we plan to market the game and the soundtrack together (our next stop is a marketing competition in Europe). It has been hard but inspiring work and we're glad to be on board!

Well this game is interesting. The trouble I have though is flipping the die to get to the right number takes a long time. You need to be able to pick out any number, move, and shoot, twice in just 3 seconds which is a tall order from me at least. Other than making it slower, or easier to pick a number (make it simply left-arrow and right-arrow to go in order) I can't think of how to make it easier up front; and I don't think slower is the answer.

Everyone meet my brother. He was already programming the Z80 while I was still in day care. He's behind making the dice sequences disappear. It's all done in diceroutine.c, if you're interested in checking the source code. I have no idea how that works! Speaking of the Z80 we could do an MSX version of Dicetris some day!

(Oct 2, 2011 05:51 PM)phydeaux Wrote: The rules of the game are somewhat unintuitive, so you might have problems with people getting confused there. I found that for me the degenerate strategy of just trying to do 7s all the time was the easiest since each block was cleared out with its complement. At that point the only challenge was memorizing which side of the die was what number.
I didn't understand what I was supposed to do at the boss either, but beat it anyway somehow.

You are right about the 7s. We have to see what to do with that. Currently, new music tracks are going to mandate the creation of the levels. The first level (which is the only level in the current version) is supposed to be introductory. From then on we are making the blocks appear in a more scripted manner. However, we probably won't make any modifications during the competition because we want to get a homogenous sample of feedback.

There's definitely something to that idea. Still, we want to emphasize the visualization of a cube with six different faces. The idea is to flex your mind in that area. Before I started on this I couldn't visualize a die in my mind but now I can. The challenge for us (the developers) is as always, to make it fun, engaging and rewarding. Still, this isn't something you'll brag about at the bus stop but it might be a fun game to kill time on if we ever develop it far enough to get it to a mobile gaming device.

(Oct 11, 2011 04:28 AM)CodeBro Wrote: I wonder, if the idea for the game isn't intuitive enough? Does anybody have good ideas how to help the player? We've thought of some, but would be nice to hear from the community.

Idea is to get either sum of seven, series or same

Sum of Seven for two: 1+6, 2+5, 3+4
Same face value for three or more: 2,2,2 or 3,3,3 etc.
Series of three or more (well max six): 2,3,4 or 6,5,4,3

The first problem is that these three rules are not obvious- you basically would have to read the help file first, which many people don't want to do; they just want to jump into the game. Contrast this with a similar game like Columns where the goal is always to get 3+ matching colors in a row, or Tetris where the goal is always to get a full line. Perhaps having a tutorial mode would help.

The second problem is that the player doesn't have long enough to really think about all the possible things he could do with how fast the dice are coming down the screen. If the player makes a mistake, it is not fast to clean up, which again is a problem because of how fast the dice are coming down. The fastest way to clean up would always be to make a 7 with the die the player previously played (in fact, that makes me think of another issue, which is that the player can match his own dice with themselves to potentially spam bonus points, though maybe that is desirable.) Maybe when clear a die that came down (that is, you didn't just make points with your own dice) the screen gets pushed up so gain more time for yourself by scoring points.

Ask yourself why the player would want to immediately score more points by risking losing the game. If the player could just spam 7s indefinitely to get a high score, why would he bother with the other more risky (in terms of accidentally making a mistake) dice combinations? The player will only use all the tools available to him if they help in some way.

Thanks a lot for good ideas. I guess the straight and "color" are obvious when you know that they are the goal, but perhaps not for the uninitiated. It's hard to ponder a question when you know the answer.

Doing sevens is actually quite slow, but doesn't require so much thinking. We did notice that you can spam dice to create complex structures, but it requires really quick wit and I think is a feature of the game. Screen going up could be worth a try. I did mod the game engine so that it stops for a little when dice gets cleared. Bit like in tetris.

The balance between risking losing the game and gaining more points needs more thought. Perhaps the extra points should be rewarded somehow in the game play.

ipeku might have thought some of this. He's more versed in the art of games than I am.

I think there is something to this game consept though, even though there is only one level I find myself playing it little too much when I pretend I'm testing it. Of course I have the pleasure of tweaking the code between sessions

Seriously though, really fantastic work here. I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy it much based on screen shots(I shy away from anything that has dice in it), but after giving it a chance, I’m really impressed by how addictive it is. Congratulations on putting in a fine performance on your first uDG!

Seriously though, really fantastic work here. I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy it much based on screen shots(I shy away from anything that has dice in it), but after giving it a chance, I’m really impressed by how addictive it is. Congratulations on putting in a fine performance on your first uDG!

Seriously though, really fantastic work here. I honestly didn’t expect to enjoy it much based on screen shots(I shy away from anything that has dice in it), but after giving it a chance, I’m really impressed by how addictive it is. Congratulations on putting in a fine performance on your first uDG!

Hey I remember you now! You're the guy that posted about the competition on the Cheetah 3D forum! hahhaha! So basically, you're responsible for all this - so thank you!

As the competition is closing today, we're gradually moving to our own site dicetris.com. We want to thank everyone for the awesome time we've had. Good luck to all participants. Maybe we will do this again next year. Have a fun fun!